uncompress v : restore to its uncompressed form; "decompress data" [syn: decompress] [ant: compress]

English

Verb

1. In the context of "computing|transitive": To restore a compressed file to its normal size.

Synonyms

• decompress

Antonyms

• compress

Usage notes

Valid in computing only, otherwise considered in deference to decompress.

uncompress is a shell command in Unix-like environments.

The uncompress utility will restore files to their original state after they have been compressed using the compress utility. If no files are specified, the standard input will be uncompressed to the standard output.

This utility supports the uncompressing of any files produced by compress. For files produced by compress on other systems, uncompress supports 9- to 16-bit compression.

Usage

The uncompress command options are specified like this:

uncompress switches files

Switches

uncompress has a number of command line options, or "switches", that can modify the output. Some of these options are

• -f: force. If given, uncompress will not prompt for overwriting files.
• -v: verbose. List all files as they are being uncompressed

See also

• compress
• List of Unix programs